Lovingkindness, or mettā, is one of the most beloved practices in our tradition. It is the first of the four brahmavihāras, luminous states of the heart known as the "divine abodes." Alongside mindfulness, in which we give wise attention to every experience that arises moment to moment, in mettā meditation, we practice radiating friendliness to every living being imaginable, beyond the distinctions of species, proximity, and importantly, liking and disliking. When faced with the perennial human experience of war, violence, and cruelty, this training in universal well-wishing confronts our conditioning to prefer one side in a conflict over another, and reminds us that the heart of wisdom is to cultivate clarity, kindness, and compassion toward everyone, whether friend or enemy.
Mettā practice unfolds, in the style most often taught at Spirit Rock, through a series of categories. We send mettā to our teachers or benefactors, then ourselves, close friends, neutral people, difficult people, and eventually to all beings, gradually expanding the circle of care to encompass the entire world and even beyond. Mettā practice can be beautiful, challenging, and profoundly transformative, promising to the wounded, hopeful heart a vaster love than we ever thought possible. It is the practice of unconditional peace: first in our own hearts, then out in all directions, even as the world is riven again and again by violence rooted in what the Buddha called the "three poisons": greed, hatred, and delusion.
Many of us are watching the many conflicts around the world and including those affected in our mettā practice. This is an expression of the compassion that comes naturally to the heart, which is said to “quiver” in response to suffering. We may easily feel compassion (karuṇā) for the victims of aggression, most of whom are folks we would put in the "neutral person" category of practice. Though we don't know them, we empathize with their fear, pain, and loss. It’s not easy, however, to take the practice further, to the category of the difficult person, if that means sending lovingkindness and compassion to those ordering or perpetrating dreadful violence. It may not even feel appropriate to do so! But without this aspect of the practice, we can never truly wish well to all beings. Our heart will always remain closed to part of the human family.
Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, in Being Peace, about working in Vietnam during the war and maintaining compassion for people on both sides of the conflict. “We tried to be open to both, to understand this side and to understand that side, to be one with them. That is why we did not take a side, even though the whole world took sides.” It is very difficult not to take sides! And important to understand that not taking sides does not mean letting go of appropriate boundaries or our values for justice and fairness. Having a clear sense of who is the aggressor and who the victim is necessary. Mettā and all the brahmavihāras are not about flattening the world or making our actions non-preferential. It is about having contact with the part of our deep being that can see beyond the immediate crisis, beyond the personal, beyond the national, beyond any aspect of identity that divides us from each other.
The brahmavihāras take us out of the comfort zone of only caring for our close friends and community, and beyond the relatively easy stretch of caring for people we don’t know but perceive as good, into the charged territory of sending kindness to those we might feel do not deserve it. Thich Nhat Hanh is open about the risks of this kind of unconditional compassion: “Working to help people in a circumstance like that is very dangerous, and many of us got killed. . . . But we did not want to give up and take one side.”
The practice of sending lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity to the difficult people in our world crosses a border constructed in our own hearts: the idea that some people deserve care and others don’t. Once we are willing to open our hearts beyond that ancient bias, the full power of brahmavihāra practice becomes available to us. As the Mettā Sutta (The Buddha's Words on Lovingkindness) invokes:
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart should we cherish all living beings,
Radiating kindness over the entire world,
Spreading upwards to the skies and downwards to the depths,
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill will. (Sn 1.8)
As we cultivate the practice of mettā and the other brahmavihāras, we bring ourselves face to face with the tendency to take sides, and are invited to grow beyond it. We may still act in defense of those victimized by violence, and must sometimes hold strong boundaries to protect ourselves and others, but the baseline of the heart can still be kindness. “Man is not the enemy,” Thich Nhat Hanh reminded his friends working for peace in Vietnam. “The only thing worthy of you is compassion—invincible, limitless, unconditional.”
May our practice be for the benefit of all. And may all be safe from the violence of war, cruelty, and oppression.
